All Necessary Force

Jennifer watched the dart game for a minute, then said, “Is Johnny religious?”

Knuckles laughed. “Hell, no. Why?”

“His baseball cap has a Bible verse on the back.”

Knuckles looked at me, passing the ball for the answer. I said, “Uhh… That’s just an inside joke. A Taskforce joke.”

Before I had to explain further, a man I did recognize joined Johnny’s group. I couldn’t recall his name, but he was Taskforce.

Knuckles said, “That’s our cue.”

We got up and sauntered over to the dartboard, spending twenty minutes introducing ourselves, throwing darts, and generally playing the “where you from” game like expats always did. Finally, Johnny said, “You’re clean. Let’s get a table outside.”

We were assaulted by the heat as soon as we exited. Even at night, the humidity caused my clothes to stick. Johnny found an isolated spot and didn’t waste any time. “I want you guys to do a B&E on the travel agency and get into Noordin’s computer.”

The task caught me by surprise. Breaking and entering wasn’t a risk-free proposition, and he already had the experts here for that. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to even enter in the first place.

I said, “We’ve got the best hackers in the world in D.C. Why take the risk of breaking in?”

“Yeah, I know, and we’ve already cracked the network, but there’s close to a hundred computers in that building, all on the same ISP. The guys have to go through each one, line by line, to see if it’s the right one. It’ll take a month.”

Knuckles chimed in. “So? That’s what we do. Slow and patient. You push the issue, and you’ll burn the Taskforce.”

“I know, but there’s a lot of chatter right now. Something big is going on, and the boss is willing to push it. Nobody has any leads, and this guy might be involved. CIA, FBI, and DOD are all pinging red, but with nothing concrete. It’s coming from all sorts of groups. JI, GSPC, AQ — everyone’s talking about a hit.”

“Why us?” I said. “You’ve got the Taskforce team. We’ve only got a couple of operators and a cover organization.”

“Because you’ve already seen the inside of the building. You know the layout.”

“Bullshit. Jennifer’s the only one that’s been inside.”

“Right.”

He didn’t say anything else, and it dawned on me that he wanted Jennifer to do the B&E.

“Whoa. Wait a minute. We’re just the cover organization. You guys do the operations. We just facilitate.”

“Pike, come on, don’t feed me that shit. You’re the only cover organization in the Taskforce that’s run by operators. What did you think was going to happen when you started traveling? You expect me to believe you wanted to sit on the sidelines?”

I looked at Jennifer and saw she had caught the reference. He had said operators. Plural.

He continued, “You know this makes sense. Why send in someone who doesn’t know the floor plan when you can send in someone who’s already been inside?”

He had a valid point. It’s exactly what I’d do — if I had my own team. But I didn’t, and Jennifer was brand spanking new. She’d never done anything like this outside of training, and it was my fault she was in this position. I’m the one who had forced her to go inside in the first place. This was a much bigger risk, and Knuckles saw it the same way.

He said, “Johnny, I agree with what you’re saying, but I don’t know. Jennifer’s not ready for this. She’s never done a live operation.”

“Jesus,” Johnny said. “She’s not going in alone. She’ll have my team there with her. I just want to use her knowledge of the floor plan. We’ll do the hard work.”

Jennifer spoke up. “I’ll do it.”

We all looked at her as if we’d forgotten she was there.

“I’ll do it on one condition. My guys go inside with me. No offense.”

I scowled and she mouthed What? I looked at Knuckles and Bull. “What do you think?”

Bull said, “If someone’s going in regardless, might as well be us getting the high adventure.”

Knuckles nodded, saying, “I’m game, but I think it’s a bad idea all the way around. Not Jennifer or us going in, but anyone going in. Too risky. Especially for a fishing trip.”

Johnny was smiling, knowing he’d won. “It’s not my call. Someone getting paid the big bucks wants it done, so don’t fret over it.”

I said, “Okay. What was your plan?”

“Well, we haven’t seen any security guards — even with the jewelry wholesaler on the third floor — so that’s not a threat. Basically, the place is wired with CCTV cameras and an alarm system, but they’re all linked into a central hub. Unfortunately, it’s a closed network. We can’t find an access point on the Web, and we’ve looked hard. We can still gain control of the SCADA system if we can just get to a wire anywhere on the network.”

SCADA stood for supervisory control and data acquisition and was an egghead phrase for the computer system that controlled the security of the building. It came from industrial processes where a computer monitored all aspects of production to ensure efficiency. More and more commercial facilities were networked this way, with one overarching computer controlling everything from the air-conditioning to the lighting — sometimes in a location hundreds of miles away from the building.

I said, “Where were you planning on gaining SCADA control?”

“There’s a blockhouse out back. We’re pretty sure that’s where the lines are feeding. Once we had control, one team would enter while another pulled security, using the cameras all over the building.”

“How sure are you about the blockhouse?”

Johnny grimaced. “Well, not one hundred percent. I was going to crack that first, put on a slave unit, then crack the building. If we couldn’t figure it out, or the blockhouse was bad, we’d just pull back.”

Knuckles said, “You just need a data line that’s in the network?”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah. We only need about two inches for the slave unit to function. It’s got a broadcast range of about a quarter mile, so anywhere nearby’s good enough.”

“Why not just use one of the wires coming out of the cameras?”

“We thought about that, but they’re all on the exterior of the building above the second floor. I thought it would be easier to crack the blockhouse than climb the building. We don’t have any climbing gear.”

“But if you tagged the camera, you’d know you had the network, right?”

“Yes,” Johnny said. “But I just told you, we don’t have any climbing gear, and I’m not risking a guy trying to do that freehand. If he fell, the whole operation would be shot. On camera, no less.”

I saw where Knuckles was going. “But what if you had the climbing gear? That’d be a better choice, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, it would.” He squinted at me. “Don’t tell me you guys brought climbing gear.”

“Something better. We brought a monkey.”

16

Jennifer was halfway up the drainpipe to the third floor when she heard movement below her. She saw three men milling around the corner of the building, half in and half out of the shadows. Her foot slid against the pipe, making a soft clanking noise. She held her breath.

Please don’t look up.

When Pike had made the monkey comment, she knew they were talking about her. At first, she had violently disagreed, saying that Johnny was right. There was just too much risk. Pike had worn her down until she eventually agreed to at least see if she could climb the building before she made a decision. She knew it was a simple four-